1923-24-BBC overseas radio service first broadcast the Chimes
of Big Ben around the world.

1929- Guy Lombardo and his big band the Royal Canadians
first played Auld Lang Syne at midnight for New Years. Lombardo and his band
became synonymous with New Years until his death in the 1980s.

1940-41- Avant Garde artists John Sloan and Marcel Duchamp
break into the Washington Square Arch in and declare Greenwich Village the
Republic of New Bohemia. Like coool, daddy.

1941- A Warner Bros memo dated this day from producer Hal
Wallis office announced that the movie to be made from a play by Murray Bennett
called “Everybody Goes to Rick’s” has been renamed “Casablanca”.

1943- Four hundred policemen are called out to control
frenzied crowds of bobbysoxers as Frank Sinatra played the Paramount Theater in
Times Square. OOHH FRANKIE !!

1946- The first Pismo Beach Clam Festival.

1947- Roy Rogers married Dale Evans.

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One
Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Spielberg called it the
"Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old
time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here, was because Chuck Jones
& Mike Maltese wrote it specifically for the cartoon.

1962- Romanoffs closed. One of the premier hot spots on the
Sunset Strip, it was the preferred hangout of Humphrey Bogart, who liked to
play chess in the afternoon with Nick Romanoff when he was between films.

1985- Singer Ricky Nelson died when his band's converted old
DC-9 airplane crashed near DeKalb, Texas. Nelson it was said had been living on
a steady diet of cheeseburgers and Snicker's bars.

1941- “I Vant to be
Alone..” Film Star Greta Garbo announced she was retiring from motion
pictures and all public appearances. She made her disappearing act complete and
was only seen fleeting on the streets of her New York neighborhood until her
death in 1990.

1963- T.V. game show "Let's Make a Deal" with
Monty Hall premieres.

1988- the Pixar short Tin
Toy released. The first CG short to win an Oscar. Until this win, Steve
Jobs was resisting his animation team making films. He was focused on getting
color graphics onto home computers. The film Toy Story began as an attempt to
capitalize on the success of Tin Toy, as a TV special Tinny’s Xmas.

1913- Cecil B. DeMille had been sent to the West
by his New York partners to scout out a possible place to move to escape
Edison's Patents Trust.

After scouting several cities with year
round sunshine, this day C.B. telegraphed his partners back in New York:” Flagstaff no good for our purpose. Have
proceeded to California. Want authority to rent a barn in a place called
Hollywood for $75 a month.” His partner Sam Goldwyn cabled back: “ Rent barn on month to month basis. Do not
make long commitment.” DeMille began shooting the Squaw Man, the first
official Hollywood Film.

1916-James Joyce’s novel “the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” published.

1964 – To create the first pilot of the TV series Star Trek,
the original model of the U.S.S. Enterprise was delivered by model maker Rick
Datin, Jr, based on the design created by Star Trek production artist Walter
“Matt” Jefferies.The “miniature” was 11
feet long!

1965- First day shooting on Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: a
Space Odyssey. It was an indoor set at Elstree Studios in England, and the
first setup was the inspection of the excavation of the Monolith in the moon
crater Tycho.

1968- Animator Bill Tytla died at age 64, from complications
of a stroke.

1972- LIFE Magazine ended publication.

1974- While staying at the Polynesian Village in Disneyworld
Florida, John Lennon signed the last
papers dissolving the Beatles. The band had broke up in 1970, but it took four
more years to unravel all of their vast financial holdings. The other three
members had already signed.

1895- THE BIRTHDAY OF CINEMA- In Paris at the Grande Cafe des
Capucines the Lumiere brothers combined Edison's kinetoscope using George
Eastman’s roll film with a magic lantern projector and showed a motion picture
to an audience in a theater. Back in the U.S. Thomas Edison thought the idea of
projecting film in a theater was foolish and would never catch on. They called
their device a Cinematograph, hence the word Cinema is born. The screening
included dancers and people leaving a factory but the biggest reaction out of
the audience was from shots of waves crashing on a rocky beach. The audience in
the front row jumped for fear of getting wet.

1897- Edmond Rostands famous play Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris. There really lived a
poet-duelist in the 1640’s named Cyrano de Bergerac-Servigan but little was
known about him. Rostand created the hopelessly lovesick big nosed hero who
helps another man romance his girlfriend Roxanne.

1928- Last recording of Ma Rainey, The Mother of the Blues.

1928- Louis Armstrong recorded West End Blues.

1944- On The Town,
a musical written by Betty Comden & Adolf Green and young composer Leonard
Bernstein premiered in NY.

1951- The British film A
Christmas Carol with the memorable performance of Alastair Sim as Scrooge
premiered in the USA.

1962- UPA’s Mr.
Magoo’s Xmas Carol first premiered on TV.

1968- The Beatles White Album goes to number one on the pop
charts.

1973-Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago” first published in Paris. The exposing of
the Soviet prison camp and police system was a great success in the west. It
gave the word for prison camp-“Gulag” into popular parlance.

1871- The world’s first cat show
opened at the Crystal Palace in London.

1887- Beginning of the Sherlock
Holmes story the Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

1903- The Barbershop Quartet
favorite “Sweet Adeline” sung for the first time. It was written in praise of
opera star Adelina Patti.

1904- PETER PAN, OR, THE BOY WHO
WOULDN’T GROW UP, a play by James M. Barrie, opened at the Duke of York Theatre
in London. Barrie reserved seats in the opening night performance for orphaned
children who laughed and cheered all night. Michael Llewelyn Davies, the little
boy Barrie befriended who was the basis for Pan, used to say:” I am not Peter
Pan. Mr Barrie is.” He committed suicide in 1960 at age 75. James Barrie once
said to H.G. Wells:” It’s all right and good to write books, but can you wiggle
your ears?”

1927- Broadway musical
"ShowBoat" debuts at the Ziegfeld theater. Based on a story by Edna
Ferber, the music was written by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein. The play
made a star out of a tall black baritone named Paul Robeson.” Ol’ Man River..”

1935- Radio City Music Hall
opened. The Art Deco masterpiece was for many years the largest indoor theater
in the world, seating over 6,000.

1940- Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler
announced their separation.

1943- The movie The Song of
Bernadette premiered.

1947- The "Howdy-Doody Show”
debuted on NBC. Buffalo Bob, Howdy and Clarabell the Clown, also known as the
Puppet Playhouse.

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2
years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld had made his first caricature
for the Broadway Stage. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend took it to
The New York Tribune and sold it. He figured here's a nifty way to make a
living, so soon he was selling to all the papers including the New York Times.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint
Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

1939- Walt Disney Animation moves from Hyperion to the new
Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed l0pzxike hospital wards, so in
case he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St.
Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the
first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old
Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1941- Goofy cartoon, the
Art of Self Defense, premiered.

1944- Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

1973- The horror film The
Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea
soup!

1985- Gorillas in the
Mist author and ape anthropologist Diane Fossey was murdered by machete in
her lab in Africa.